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by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Canon Era, Episode: s02e06 Through a Glass Darkly, F/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Pegging, Sub!Athos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 09:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3442415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Call it duty or call it guilt, she’s in his bed and he’s lying on a blanket on the hard wooden floor and listening to the silence that’s heavy around them – she’s not sleeping either, and he still remembers the sound of her sleeper’s breathing, soft and steady in the home they shared, like a dream made flesh – and the thoughts beating over and over at the walls of his mind and nothing gained by it, nothing learned.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Of course, that’s the moment when she turns towards him and peels back the corner of the blanket, and says, coy and playful like his wife, like another man’s mistress –</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Aren’t you going to come and keep me warm, then?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> A possible coda to 2x06, inspired by the 2x07 trailer where it's implied that Athos provides for Milady after her expulsion from the palace.
> 
> I have so much more to say about these two, but hopefully this is a start.
> 
> Content notes: Pegging.

She’s in his home – lying in his bed, his blankets pulled round her shoulders – and he can’t sleep.

It feels like it’s been hours, and for all that he tries and tries not to think the thoughts just keep on coming, swirling round and round in an eddy of confusion, bringing no neat conclusions with them.

He loved her and she betrayed him; and though a part of him hates her (though _all_ of him should hate her) he still couldn’t bring himself to turn her away a second time.

Call it duty or call it guilt, she’s in his bed and he’s lying on a blanket on the hard wooden floor and listening to the silence that’s heavy around them – she’s not sleeping either, and he still remembers the sound of her sleeper’s breathing, soft and steady in the home they shared, like a dream made flesh – and the thoughts beating over and over at the walls of his mind and nothing gained by it, nothing learned.

Of course, that’s the moment when she turns towards him and peels back the corner of the blanket, and says, coy and playful like his wife, like another man’s mistress –

“Aren’t you going to come and keep me warm, then?”

He expected this.

She was a thief and a whore, he reminds himself, the Cardinal’s assassin, the King’s mistress – and he’s seen it coming ever since she walked in the door.

It’s the same way she spoke to the King just this morning.

The same way she used to speak to him.

“ _Don’t_.”

It comes out harsh and ragged, and he forces himself to take a breath, not caring if he gives himself away. “Speak to me in that manner again and I will throw you out.”

She chuckles, as she had when she sought him out in the alleyway all those months ago. Enjoying the hold she had over him. “Do you really think I’m going to bewitch you again? Surely you know everything now.”

She’s mocking him; he’s never felt less certain of anything, and he can feel his anger rising, does she _want_ him to put her out on the street? “I know that everything we had was a lie.”

He expects to be laughed at again, but when her reply comes it’s as cold and hard as he’s ever heard her:

“And wouldn’t it be so much easier for you if that were true.”

“Tell, me, then,” he asks – unable to let it lie, _hating_ himself for the glimmer of hope that creeps into his voice even as he knows it will ruin him, that she will push her fingers into that crack and prise it open before wrapping them once more around his heart, “what was _true_?”

She pats the mattress beside her – once, twice – in clear invitation.

“Why don’t I show you?”

 

* * *

 

He opened the shutters a little, and though he refused to light a candle there’s enough moonlight to see the wooden phallus for what it is.

 _She planned this,_ he thinks, and he doesn’t know if he should be angry with her or himself, or if he should even care.

He’s disgusted with himself, of course, but he’s also half-hard just from the way he knows she’ll make him wait for it, as she snatches the object back out of his hand before shoving at his head until he drops down between her legs and pushes her chemise up to her waist; and then fully so when she weaves her hands into his hair and forces his lips from her thighs up to her sex, arching her back and moaning in appreciation.

It feels so much a homecoming that he has to remind himself of what she did, listing her crimes out in his mind as he mouths at her and traces circles with his tongue, clinging to that knowledge even as he throws his dignity entirely to the wind.

She planned this; and perhaps she’s right, they really will never be free of each other.

It isn’t until she’s come against his mouth with his hands gripping tight to her thighs that she murmurs, as soft and unguarded as if she hadn’t meant to speak, “This was always real.”

He goes still as something in his stomach drops, in an echo of that first betrayal.

Pushing himself up and away from her spread thighs as from a predator, he asks, in a voice as tightly controlled as he can muster, “Why should I believe you?”

“Why would I lie?”

She says it as if it’s obvious; and his answer should be, too.

“To gain my sympathy.”

He doesn’t have to see to know she’s rolling her eyes. “Oh, please. The arrogance of men. There’s nothing I want from you I don’t already have. And believe it or not, I prefer to be truthful when I can.”

And the part of him that likes to grit his teeth and bear the ache of a wound instead of seeking treatment, that drinks even when he knows drink to be no solace, is the part that wants to ask, _did you truly love me, even though you lied?_

_Or did you just want my name, and my protection?_

What he says is, “Convince me.”

She sits up too, gathering the blanket about her. “You know what I did.” It’s a statement of fact, no hint of apology. “I gave them all what they wanted. You too, sometimes. But you’re the only one from whom I took what _I_ wanted.”

And he remembers it all. Her thighs, bracketing his head, bearing down; her hand on his throat; the sweet agony of being breached, of letting her inside.

It’s the one thing he’s never truly been able to make himself regret. He could never quite let go of the old longing, the new shame that flooded in through the cracks.

He can’t stop himself asking, “Were you happy?”

“Yes. Sometimes.”

_Sometimes…?_

But before he can know what to think she’s pulling him to her by the neck of his chemise in one fluid movement, her other hand closing round his cock through his braies – he’s still mostly hard, and it’s been so _long_ , he doesn’t know if he can last; and he gasps out into her open mouth, “I won’t – I –”

She kisses his words away with a fierceness that’s almost anger, bruising and biting his lips; and he doesn’t understand anything and certainly doesn’t want to _think_ , just wants to pull her close and feel her body against him beneath her thin chemise, to lay her down and sheathe himself inside her, come home –

_I gave them all what they wanted. You too._

No.

They no longer have a home.

There’s a sourness rising in his gorge and he’s gasping as she pushes him back with the hand that’s still against his chest, staring at her with an emotion he can’t name or classify; and his eyes have adjusted to the dark enough to see the spark in hers, the curl of her lip as she smirks.

“Don’t worry, my love,” she croons, in a mockery of love, “I know you’ll do what you’re told.”

She’s moved again almost before he’s registered it, dragging him down to the bed; and he goes willingly, taking his weight on his forearms, the fabric of his shirt billowing around his face, covering his eyes and mouth for a moment until he shifts and turns his head to one side, pushing his cheek against the sheet where it’s warm from her body.

For a moment the sense memory’s so strong that he thinks he can smell La Fère again, the night air through the open windows, that he’s back there; and it _aches_ in his heart mirroring the ache in his cock as she undoes his braies with nimble fingers and pulls them down.

He screws his eyes shut, though he can’t help gasping as she runs a hand lightly across his hip, making him shiver, and realise just how exposed he is, with his arse in the air, arching his back and pushing into her touch – like a bitch in heat, he can’t help thinking, the sweet shame of it enough to make his cock pulse again, where it’s hanging heavy between his legs.

He’s too weak to resist her tonight, too far gone to answer the question of whether it matters any more that he should; but then he feels the mattress shift behind him, and hears the noise of a stopper being removed from a bottle before her fingers are pressing against his entrance, slick with oil, and her voice saying, “Ask me for it.”

He thought he’d remembered, but how could he have forgotten this, the way his face heats as her words sink in, how he smells her in the linen and takes a deep, shuddering breath, knowing his fate is already sealed? He thinks he cannot bear to say the words and yet he knows he will, that his surrender is as inevitable as the erosion of the cliffs by the tide, stripping him back and back through the years, back under her hands, back home.

He half-thinks he will have to force the word out of his mouth; but instead it comes floating on a breath of air like a sigh, like a breeze in the hair, like spring grass.

“Please?”

There are no right answers, he realises as she fucks him mercilessly, nails scoring into his hips and her hair trailing over his back as she pants with the effort; no moral lesson that could guide him then, or now. The woman he loves is the woman who ruined him, and he knows her better than he knows himself, and not at all.

But he knows the woman who leans over to cover his body with hers, shifting the angle of her hips until bursts of pleasure are shooting through him to his cock, who kisses his shoulder blade as she reaches for him and murmurs, “Did you miss me?”

 

* * *

 

They don’t speak, after. He lies on his back under the blankets with his eyes shut and ignores whatever she’s doing in the room, wiping her hand somewhere, untying the scarves that secured the phallus over her sex.

It makes a strange sense that they should know each other this way, when all he knows of man’s supposed strength and woman’s supposed weakness seems to have inverted in them, turned everything on its head.

He doesn’t move when she climbs in beside him and lays one head on his shoulder, one arm across his chest, in a manner that from another would be submissive but from her feels entirely proprietary.

He shouldn’t want to talk, not to _her,_ they should have nothing left to say to each other – but perhaps she’s the only one who can answer the questions that have been dogging him for years.

_But this was always real._

He lifts a hand, smoothing her hair back off her face, and confesses, “I don’t understand.”

She snorts – and he can tell he’s annoyed her. “Of course you don’t.”

He allows her a few moments of silence, before pushing: “I want to, though.”

She laughs, not an ounce of humour in it. “Oh, don’t tell me. You suddenly want to hear my side of the story. Well, you had your chance, and you strung me up instead.”

Hearing it, of course, hurts enough that for a few moments he can’t breathe, has to screw his eyes even more tightly shut and fight against the urge to kick her out the door without a penny to her name, to find a full bottle and drink till he’s insensible, till the hot shame in his breast is dulled to a manageable ache. To run from the past when he can’t help feeling more and more that it’s time to face it, in the hope of at least finding some measure of peace.

He takes a breath.

“What if I said that I was wrong?”

 


End file.
